Somehow I doubt it’s even that. The guy’s just a braindead, incompetent moron. I don’t think the fucker’s even smart enough to realize this is literally the worst possible decision he could’ve made.
Seems naive to prioritize stupidity over malice when trying to make sense out of the actions of businessmen and politicians, but Elon has shown a penchant for stupidity lately.
im pretty certain he is being paid by the saudis to destroy twitter. it's way too powerful a vehicle to be in the hands of the proletariat.
this might sound crazy but ..... this is why kbin/lemmy etc is so important. in about 2 years+ time, there will be a gigantic global civil war as the masses rise up and seek to annihilate the billionaires. the billionaires will hide behind the use of nukes by russia, then china invades taiwan, then WW3, then Biden is cloned, Covid26 arrives, global tsunamis and geostorms, and then the aliens invade. It's all pretty much clear. we need to organise now, to just give 0.5% of our kids a miniscule chance to survive the coming extinction of humanity.
I'm a bit dubious about this stat; it feels similar to the User's stat being over run by bots.
Lemmy has about 50,000 users, similar to Kbin, but it's users are commenting 120 times and also posting 16 times each a day on average? That seems unrealistic.
For comparison, Kbin (which actually has a slightly larger active user base) is produced about 100,000 comments a day, which is about 2 comments a day and about 0.6 posts per user per day. Interestingly Kbin's total users and active users are almost identical.
The threadiverse is certainly doing well, but I think the Lemmy stats continue to be skewed away from reality. I'm wondering if this is not actually all to do with bots, but some fundamental error in the counting/collection? Are the same comments and posts and maybe even the total user count in Lemmy being counted multiple times in the data fed back by the different servers?
Lemmy has about 50,000 users, similar to Kbin, but it’s users are commenting 120 times and also posting 16 times each a day on average? That seems unrealistic.
I think there might some confusion in your comment. The post's data is for all lemmy instances, which is larger than just lemmy.world.
As of this moment, lemmy.world has about 51k users, followed by lemmy.ml's 39k and beehaw.org's 11k. If you take the top 10 non-bot lemmy instances, they add up to roughly 136k users. And that's just 10 out of 1000 instances. Source: https://the-federation.info/platform/73
But the important metric as far as comments is the number of active Lemmy users, not the number of registered users. There are 51k lemmy.world users, but according to your link, only 14437 are active (posting or commenting). The total number of active Lemmy users (edit: across all instances) is about 50k, and I believe that's what Trifle is referring to, so the comments are still being divided by those ~50k active users.
@MicroWave I had never heard of the Fediverse or kbin before the protests on Reddit. I’m really hoping this all takes off. I’ve been enjoying my time here so far.
Same. I knew about mastodon but couldn't imagine a viable reddit alternative taking off so soon. And now, we've got lemmy and kbin users seamlessly talking to each other. It's amazing.
and I'll be the first one to say it because either people don't want to talk about it or they just don't think about it
SUPPORT YOUR INSTANCE .... SUPPORT YOUR OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
It doesn't matter who you are on ... lemmy, kbin, mastodon or anyone else ... find your instance owner and see if they are looking for donations or subscriptions and sign up for them
Sure the only way we can protect this new system is by keeping it federated, open and decentralized ... but it all only works if small groups of people pay for the basic hardware services and rental services and any other services out there to keep it all running ... yes the costs are minimal for small instances but those costs only add up as their instance becomes more popular.
Supporting your instance means it will stay protected ... if you burn out your instance owners or they run into financial trouble .. then your instance will start more risks including being shut down or sold to someone else
And it doesn't take much to support these guys ... if we all just gave a dollar a month, it would be more than enough to support them.
I’m not going to defend health insurance companies, but this is not because of your insurance. CVS will only see patients with simple medical problems because they 1) are not equipped for more in-depth diagnosis and treatment and 2) don’t want the liability associated with such. UTIs in males are medically complicated, by definition which has a very specific meaning. Males don’t just get UTIs like females do, because the male urethra is significantly longer, providing significantly more protection from bacterial retrogression to the bladder. The long story short is that if you are a male with a UTI you need to go to an actual healthcare facility and see a qualified professional, not an NP/PA at your local CVS.
Because it's much less likely for men to get a UTI in the first place, it's much more likely that if they have one, that it's not a simple "throw some bactrim at it and it will go away" situation. With a male UTI, there's a higher chance that the UTI is in fact a symptom of a more serious issue, rather than the issue itself. And determining that requires diagnostics that are beyond the scope of what can be done at a minute clinic.
Because someone needs to collect a comprehensive history from the patient to decide what kind of/if a referral is needed. The assembly line care at CVS isn’t geared for this.
It’s different because it requires significantly more diagnostic effort to determine the root cause, which corresponds to more effort to treat. Women have a urethra that’s extremely short. They can get a UTI from routine activities like having sex or wiping from back to front after having a bowel movement. The treatment for cases like these is extremely simple: just prescribe an antibiotic.
With males, the urethra is so long that it’s almost impossible to get a UTI because of things like these. When males get a UTI, they are caused by things like kidney stones, anatomical abnormalities, indwelling catheters, etc. Your average CVS practitioner is not going to be able to order imaging and determine whether your kidney stone needs to be broken up. Or make the determination as to whether surgery is needed to correct some other abnormality. Additionally, these complicating factors that cause UTIs in men can lead to more complications down the road. For example, if you have a kidney stone causing a UTI, you don’t have cystitis (infection of the bladder) but rather pyelonephritis (infection of the kidney). Giving an antibiotic will not treat this because the stone will continue to seed the infection. Meanwhile, you are at increased risk of having the infection spread to your blood (sepsis), which doesn’t generally happen with cystitis.
CVS cannot help you with this. Frankly I wouldn’t trust CVS with my primary care even for the categories that are in OP’s picture because CVS’s exam room care is meant to make money, not provide comprehensive care.
I'm not saying you're incorrect, but this is inconsistent with my experience. I have had about 6 or 7 UTIs, and across multiple urgent care facilities, the experience has mostly just entailed me getting urinalysis, something a MinuteClinic is capable of, and being prescribed antibiotics. Once they sent me to an ER instead and that time I was giving imaging, but it seems like plenty of places are willing to just make the call to prescribe antibiotics and recommend following up with a primary care provider afterwards. This has also always been covered by insurance. I'm not saying they've ever solved the root problem, but they have no issue treating the symptom. I'm not sure what I'm missing or if my city's healthcare just sucks or what.
And yes, I know that statistically something is wrong with me. I've talked with my new primary care provider about it and they're basically just telling me to monitor it and give them a call if it happens again.
The issue here is the clown medical delivery system that enables these scenarios. At this point, people have better chances of diagnosis and treating themselves than rely on a chain of clowns, if only medical devices and pharmaceuticals were easily available.
Riiigghhttt! I can understand that that differences in physical biology demand different attention. That's not what I'm complaining about. It's the way it's set up. I was told that at my appointment. Why not just refer me to a specialist? The website could've even just referred me to urgent care. But, no, their goal is to obfuscate and irritate until the patient gives you and pays out-of-pocket.
@TrinityTek Hi - its not the mods at r/liberalgunowners who removed your post. I've been in touch with the mod there and when I made a similar post about Kbin last week it was removed by the Reddit admins, not the sub mods. They wanted to let me know it wasn't them. Spez has been doing all sorts of shit like that, Its one big reason why I'm done with Spezzit. Post in the m/liberalgunowners magazine here on Kbin-social.
I'm probably going to just have to take some kind of leap of faith then, because I've been completely banned from Reddit now, which means I can't message the mods there, and they can't message me. Fuckity fuck.
Is it possible to communicate to the real mods (not from the company) for OP's favor to introduce that Lemmy community? Why not reach and private talk to them? Why not the mods themselves to introduce it?
Also suggestion:
Why not flood advertize Lemmy/etc... by many many supporting users on every sub on that website through posts and comments (would affect to storage space and content-analysis-for-AI)? Let's see if those really fake insecure company pretending to be mods could keep that.
@xptiger wanted to say that the mod team is actively looking for alternatives but as I mentioned they feel that they need much higher functioning mod tools to be able to make the switch
Thanks for letting me know! I certainly hope that's true and it wasn't actually the sub mod team as the message indicated. That's really slimy for Reddit admins to do that and make out as though it's the mods, but it's definitely not surprising at this point.
@TrinityTek I feel very confident that it is not the mods that took your post down. Like I mentioned my post was taken down by Reddit admin, not the mods. The head mod at LGO has been checking out Lemmy and Kbin as potential alternatives. He is concerned about the lack of mod tools here because they get trolls from everywhere. You can check on the LGO wiki for their approach, but the mods feel like they are fucked once the third party apps end. Recommend you DM him on Reddit. Also, understanding mod tools is beyond my technical capability but the way we can help ourselves is to put the tools in place that will give the LGO mods confidence that we’re a viable alternative. They recognize that gun related subreddits are not in Spez’s plans and there is a community being served that vitally needs help.
It’s a great fun movie. The plot’s great, the pacing is great, the references are great, the comedy is great. It’s a fun adventure with a relatable team of misfit heroes.
It takes some liberties with the game mechanics to accomplish this. If you can’t forgive that, you’ll have a rough time, especially if you like wildshaping druids and spellcasting bards.
This is the most accurate description, IMO. If you’re looking for something that’s going to incorporate all the game mechanics into the story, and do so accurately, this isn’t it.
If you want a great time at the movies with excellent comedy, action, and characters you care about - while still holding true to the fantasy and adventure spirit of D&D?
Our last two hour session was combat round 2, continuing from combat round 1 from the previous week. The week before that was the end of the puzzle before the combat round.
It's our groups first quest, we've been going for almost a year, and have done a dozen or so combats and 3 "one offs" that 2/3 lasted more than one session. The DM loves it because he gets to fill in a lot of flavor/lore for everything, we love it because we move at our own pace.
2 hour sessions can be rough. Even just bumping up to 2.5 hours feels like you get a lot more game per week. I do love how unhurried you guys are though. Sounds like everyone in your group is fully engaged and immersed.
One of the rare movies that starts shaky and then finds its footing and breaks out into a conditioned run by the end of it. Didn't go in expecting much, got a good time.
Rest ye Jarnathan, you deserve a break.
Edit, and the dragon! My wife is obsessed with dragons and she was in love with the one in the movie, it's like her favorite dragon now.
While it does skirt some game mechanics, probably due to it being a movie and it's a strange medium to adapt, it also does some really cool subtle things with the mechanics. For example, in the final major fight all of the characters attack in the same order. They're in initiative!
This, pretty much. Pretty hard to be 100% game accurate and make a good movie. Appreciated where they took license, and where they stuck to some (often, obscure) lore.
My wife suspected this about that final fight, but it goes by quickly in the theater, and unfortunately it’s streaming on one of the few services we don’t have or want to pay for, so we haven’t re-watched it in a pause-able format.
They came after a small sub I moderate today too. My response was to make a sticky post to the sub with the contents of the mod mail and a recommendation for everyone to move to kbin or lemmy. I hadn't planned on giving reddit any more free content anyways given their behaviour.
That's a good idea, I have a small sub (only 20k subs) and I kept it dark till yesterday. I don't want to give Reddit the satisfaction of taking it, but putting sticky posts for kbin/lemmy seems like the way to go. I think I'll post a user guide, too.
On that subject, kbin reminds me of the Reddit I migrated to after Digg killed itself. It's a bit trickier for novices to navigate, but the interface is starting to grow on me, and I suspect that will be the case for many.
If you vote republican, you’re not a good person, and never have been since the party flip-flop. They’ve always been the party trying to suppress the rights of anyone who isn’t a rich white male.
And now they’re literally traitors trying to overthrow our government.
No I realise it could be taken that way. If you read further up their comment it says if you vote for someone it’s the same as overthrowing the government. I wrote I would never in response to the voting part, I didn’t need to go any further but I understand how it may have been taken that way
I tried not to block ads, I would let the preroll go and usually not skip it.
I started skipping ads when they started getting long. I recall some were several minutes long at times.
I started leaving videos part way through when there were mid-roll ads, and those got long enough that I’d often forget what I was even watching.
I started blocking the ads outright when I would be watching a relaxing video, and a very loud mid-roll ad would blow out my goddamn eardrums.
Fuck you YouTube. You abused your users, you chased off good content creators, and now you’re offering people no carrot and all stick. How about you offer to match the volume of the ads to the videos, limit the length of ads to something reasonable, and nicely tell viewers that you are making ads less annoying and that unblocking the ads helps pay the content creators.
They get away with this because people don’t use the alternatives. Odysee and Rumble are actually good alternatives. No, they’re not as good as YouTube, but they’re good enough. We just need creators to also upload to those platforms. Since YouTube keeps banning and demobilising them, this problem might solve itself.
Lmfao. I had literally never heard of Rumble. I opened up a private browser window and pulled it up for the first time ever.....the "Featured" was fucking Newsmax TV. Now obviously this isn't indicative of the whole site but damn that does not help your point when that's the featured for a brand new potential user
I’m not claiming it doesn’t have Newsmax on it. I’m claiming the service is solid. If you subscribe to people you care about (and you can find creators you like) it’s a good platform alternative. I’m the first to argue we need more YouTube creators to cross-post.
There are Nazis on YouTube, Reddit, and Lemmy. Why are you here? You are not automatically associated with Nazis just because they might use a platform. This is like saying veganism is evil because Hitler was a vegan.
in sheer numbers, the larger services likely host more nazis. but who gives a fuck about that? the site is run by bad people and they will measure their success in eyeballs, so you can help starve them, and there is no need to talk about how many nazis are there.
Which proportion of a platform must be Nazi-free before you will use it? How are you measuring the Nazi percentages of YouTube, Lemmy, Reddit, and Rumble?
Curious, how does monetization work on those platforms? The bigger “Content creators” typically will be making videos as a job, so to draw them you’d need a halfway decent way to monetize.
if they’re anything like cable ads, they actually make the ads louder than the regular programming on purpose to try to make sure you hear it if you tune out or just walk away. no relaxed, unfocused watching for you!
I used to make animations for YouTube, which weren’t monetized because I hate ads, and one day they copyright struck me for some very provably public domain music, but the way they did it was to insert ads into my video without my consent so they could monetize them to send the money to the scammer who flagged me. So I just deleted my entire account, fuck them.
Lmao “you purposely made your stuff shit. Now, if you offered a basic service without all the shit, I might pay for that.”
Bruh, you don’t pay for something because it’s not shit, you pay for something because it’s good. By paying for a basic service simply because it’s not shit, you are incentivising them to enshittify their service and offer a premium “not shit” version, instead of actually improving their service.
It’s just like the people who buy the new iPhone because it actually has a headphone jack this time.
My issue is that Obama's presidency gave us on the left the idea that things could actually get better.
Like for many of us, myself included, there was this idea of a hopeful optimistic future where Americans didn't care what your gender was or what your sexuality was or what your politics were as long as you were trying to be a decent person you were okay.
And in the seven years since Trump was elected that hope has been utterly demolished and now we're just hoping that people can get their heads out of their asses long enough to like not destroy the planet before our potential children have to grow up in its wreckage.
It boils my beans that all Trump had to do was be a do-nothing president, go out and shake a few babies and then grift to his heart's content, and after 4 years pack it up and go home and take all the silver on his way out the door, and there would still be the possibility of things getting better but he just had to run his mouth, he had to get on social media, he had to incite people to violence and rage to make himself happy and now this is where we are.
Bush Jr at least just seemed kinda kookie while still managing to not make the office of the president look like a bad political comedy was playing out in real life
Just slightly more than a third of us, then the next third would prefer to not hear anything, and then the last third just keep screaming because of how horrified we are
To be fair, I don't think Trump would do any differently.
Trump was willing to destroy his own country and get his own people fucked in the process. What thought do you think he'd spare for civilisations he'd consider 'others'?
It is easier to talk like that, because his election stunt didn't succeeded, but US (as it was created by founding fathers) almost ceased to exist. Also, don't forget that he had his own share in people's deaths.
As a person living in an allied state of the US: It did cease to exist as a stable partner. The US is currently an incredibly unstable powder keg, and as sad as it is, we have to start splitting off and dealing with you as a potential enemy nation until you guys have this Trump shit under control.
It’s not possible to have a stable partnership if the people who try to overthrow the government can once again run for government.
I’ll agree that Andrew Jackson is probably still worse than Trump for literally committing genocide against the native peoples who were forced from their ancestral land. That being said, Trump disrespecting the peaceful transference of power for the first time in the nation’s history is a massive blemish on our country, and he should not be remembered fondly by anybody.
You can also add in the fact that Trump’s downplaying of COVID, and subsequent politicizing of prevention measures was unquestionably responsible for huge numbers of deaths.
Reports state that 40% less Americans would die, if he didn't politicize it.
Frankly, if he took it as seriously as other presidents (on both sides) did with other epidemics and sent experts to help contain it. It is possible that we could talk about it as yet another media scare.
This is a huge problem. Everyone just jokes about it because he failed miserably, but it literally would’ve been a coup on the White House of the United States if those idiots succeeded.
That’s stupid. It’s not that any 10 people out of the world could have stopped it, it’s that only those 10 people could have stopped it and we’re damn lucky they did so.
The officers that mislead some of the raiders did an amazing job. And they are heroes, but that wouldn't have mattered anything if Trump had had some sort of lieutenant leading the group.
All that those raiders lacked was a leader telling them to kill the politicians and senators in the Senate building and there may not have been any survivors.
I remember seeing the videos and all of the pictures were they're just sitting around and exploring, kicking their feet up in a senator's chair and stopping for photo ops.
They didn't know what to do once they got there, and that was the primary thing that saved us, however, if we keep relying on the stupidity of evil to save us then eventually there's going to be a smart evil person who fucks us over hard.
Andrew Johnson was pretty terrible as well, conceded a lot during reconstruction to the southern land owners which had a lasting negative impact on so many. Coolidge and Truman were pretty terrible as well, and Taft is like low hanging fruit. Nixon wasn’t that bad in office relatively speaking but is only known for Watergate now.
The last 3 scheduled missions there was no telling what could have happened next. He was also presented with a solid plan to go to Mars within a decade and took a pass on it for tax cuts for the rich.
As for public opinion polls please cite sources and good luck with that since polls were no where collected as frequently. The truth is within a few months of Apollo 11 he has already taken down the earth rising photo from the Oval office and he had tried to cancel the program completely when he took office but his hand was forced by Apollo 9.
He tried to kill it fully and failed, out of spite he killed it when he could. Nixon never forgave anyone, he had an enemy list, he went after almost small town journalists who wrote slightly bad about him multiple years prior. For him to sit there and just allow the legacy of a man who beat him to continue would have torn him apart. Like everyone GOP leader since, he breaks what he could have never hoped to have built or even inspired.
The smart thing would have been to continue the program with more ambitious missions on the surface. All the rocket people could have been redirected to start working on small reusable rockets instead of the space plane. The mission to Mars had too much project risk so hold off on that for a while.
I think the worst things about Nixon was his role implementing American foreign policy when it came to anti-communism and his “drug war” policies. The best could be the things he didn’t personally care about as much, he started the first affirmative action program, was too slow with desegregation but did support civil rights and the overall moral goal of it, and he implemented some tax cuts that benefitted working class.
Apollo would be a more minor bad for me, it didn’t really do much to benefit average people other than serve as a symbol of America’s power and the next frontier. I think there’s a lot of nostalgia for some of these programs today but they were always sort of funded to be demonstrations of America’s power, if the Soviets weren’t interested in space they probably wouldn’t have happened. A byproduct of Apollo was public funding of technology which is great, but a lot of that also benefits the military industrial complex and America’s imperialism, so it’s not this happy story that it’s often portrayed as like “we have small computers because of Apollo!”
We’re talking about people who are narcissists and psychopaths running an empire though, they’re all evil.
Take the total number of felonies Trump has been charged with then divide by the total number of presidents. The average number of felonies per POTUS is around 2. 😛
Really just depends on the metric we’re using to evaluate. When if we’re talking body count, don’t forget that Trump ran a smear campaign against the voices of reason during the peak of covid, and promoting general distrust in health sciences - the influence of which spread across the entire globe, resulting in the deaths of millions.
They both have a justifiable claim to “worst president to date”.
The child separation policy he was behind at the southern border is within the Geneva Convention’s definition of genocide: “Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” The children were taken from their parents with no intention of returning them, many were adopted by American families when their own parents “couldn’t be found” because there was no system put in place to do so.
Uggghhhhhh… I was so angry at everyone that whole time this was going on. The “just asking questions” guys at my job couldn’t understand why I was so enraged that America(!) Was taking children from parents who were peacefully trying to make a better life for themselves.
“But it’s illegal to cross the border!”… Bro shut the fuck up before I feed you a monkey wrench.
It’s also illegal to speed but 95% of drivers are actively speeding at any time. It’s so dumb, they act like they give a shit about laws and then cnn or some other garbage institution takes them seriously.
Within the definition, but Jackson was actively murdering indigenous Americans and wiping their nations from the face of the Earth. I would still call that worse, as horrific as Trump’s administration was.
If it makes you feel any better, the nation probably wouldn’t survive a president much worse than Trump. Can’t have a “history of the nation” anymore if there’s no nation!
“All” it takes is for people to get tired of it and have a massive strike.
Unfortunately, it’s really difficult due to a dystopian mixture of:
elite-owned and operated media
a “golden era” of distractions (phones, movies, television shows, video games) (see above)
overwork and exhaustion
struggle to survive and make ends meet
warranted desire for a quiet life for one’s children
fear
general negativity and toxic stances from one person to another
dramatic lack of funding and support for mental healthcare
abysmal lack of funding and support for healthcare. period.
Massive amount of debt and lack of financial freedom
lack of bodily autonomy and a safety net for unplanned pregnancies
failure of making people of other genders, cultures, and beliefs feel safe, instead threatening and taking their lives
plus many other things. I tend to be generally positive and optimistic, and I’m very hopeful that we, the people, will change things incrementally… but it’s also hard to ignore how shit things are right now.
Let’s just remember that it wasn’t a single person or party that got us here. It’s been decades of systemic failures choices by the ruling class, from people far beyond party lines, behind closed doors. Lobbyism is bipartisan, at least as far as some of the most powerful people in Congress go. Those failures choices led to the rise of fake populism in the form of Trumpism, and other equally disturbing movements.
At the end of the day, I personally don’t think anything is going to happen for us. Instead, the people at large need to decide that they’re ready for it. I’m hopeful that it’s going to happen, but it won’t be easy.
I’m not a political science major, local politician… hell, I’m not even a political activist as much as I’d love to convince myself that I am. I’m a multiracial guy from two immigrants who was raised in a melting pot of a city, being told my whole childhoold that I live in the greatest country in the world and I can never question it.
From a quick search, populism is a political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite. From my interpretation of the definition, Trumpism is not populism, but capitalism under the guise of populism. That being said, at the end of the day, I prefer to use as little labels as possible (politician names, political parties, ideologies, etc). Everyone has their own interpretation, experiences, biases, and understanding of such labels. It feels almost self-defeating to discuss politics using labels instead of discussing the actual issues, at least to me.
If you don’t mind, I’d rather discuss the core problem: Trump was able to exploit the working-class people who have, for whatever reason, felt disillusioned by both parties. It was a ruse that many people saw through, but many also did not. In the past few decades, wealth has been further distributed to those few that control most media, corporations, and legislation. The minimum wage has remained the same despite the massive increase in the cost of living. More and more people are feeling less and less fulfilled. More and more people are less and less likely to be able to retire. I can go on and on. That has been a slow, persisting threat that has spread throughout several administrations representing both parties.
Whatever you choose to call my beliefs is on you, I’m simply offering my perspective to anyone who’s interested in listening. I’m just a random guy who doesn’t mean shit compared to the people in charge and sees the silent suffering of the people around me that I love and care about. And the people who I don’t know that are going through the same exact shit. Maybe all this is just my way of coping with the chaos of the world, but to me, it feels like more people agree than we’re led to believe.
I completely agree with every single one of your points. At the same time… some of the memes are fucking hilarious when not taken seriously. It’s extremely difficult not to take it as such, though, with a topic as inherently severe as politics.
Populism is the mass appeal of demagogues involving simplistic, faceless enemies and equally simplistic solutions to problems. It is not evidence-based and it’s policies are often counter productive.
Populism is a cancer and politicians that use populist rhetoric should be considered inherently untrustworthy.
Problems do exist and the solutions to those problems should be found in sound, evidence-based policies, not conspiracy theories about global elites.
Everyone one of your complaints, for instance, is reflective of a real concept but is inherently misleading to more effectively appeal to people like you, who are self-identifying as not very knowledgeable about policy. I am not being mean here - this is an intentional tactic, and it is a very real concept.
Let’s take an example: “the minimum wage has not gone up.”
This is misleading for several reasons
1: state minimum wage has absolutely gone up in very many states, and exceeds the federal.minimum
As you check that (progressive, pro-$15 minimum wage) site, you’ll also note that 28 states have raised their minimum wage recently, 30 states + DC have a min wage higher than federal minimum, and 8 states effectively have no minimum wage.
2: 98.5% of working adults do not make minimum wage.
So what’s the real reason here? It’s obviously not a minimum wage concern. The real reason is simple: most Americans feel economically left behind.
Only by addressing this actual fact, and debating and discussing policies about this thing both parties and most Americans can agree on, can we move away from dangerous, divisive rhetoric and back toward actual policy discussion.
You way underestimate the power of striking in the US. Nationwide strike. I couldn’t imagine a week long strike. The impact to the economy would be staggering. Any longer then that you’re talking ending the US dollar.
You way underestimate the power of striking in the US. Nationwide strike. I couldn’t imagine a week long strike.
I remember how quickly and enthusiastically centrist Democrats simped for rail bosses. Like, I bet at least one of them won’t read past that first sentence before dropping at least one long paragraph of condescension.
This mindset and Trumpism are two sides of the same populist coin. It may be tempting, but beware the populist-fascist pipeline, lest you end up a left-wing magat.
Personally, I believe this is a fairly big reason as to why the majority of people are disillusioned with politics and would rather not discuss it. I mean no offense to you or your comment. Truly, I only mean that in the grand scheme of things, your reply has many words that don’t address any substantial problems.
Surely wanting an equally free, comfortable, and good quality of life for as many as possible while using empirical data is not the same as spreading hate and disinformation?
No way he is 215, but I’m not surprised the number is something like that. I don’t think he even got on the scale. They probably just asked him and accepted his answer. Like him or not, he is a former president and they are going to handle him with kid gloves. Not to mention there is a decent chance the people processing him also voted for him.
Not a chance in hell. I’m 6’1 or so at 250 lbs. I do carry my weight well, but he looks substantially bigger than me. If he is truly 6’3, I’m guessing he’s pushing about 280.
He just made another false statement to officials. He won’t be charged, but that’s what this is. I would laugh my ass off if his indictment gets superceded with an additional charge for this.
I know by BMI it is, but I also know people of both examples and there’s a notable difference in appearance. I wouldn’t say a 6’3” 215lbs male looks very overweight, and Trump looks overweight.
I think it was in a Jon Stewart interview about Trump that mentioned how surprisingly large he is when first meeting him. It kind of goes to explain how he can dominate a room - I worked the first season of the Apprentice as a driver, so I wasn’t on set with him, but I’ve seen him on the street (with his bodyguards) and I believe he’s 6’3" … I don’t believe he weighs anything under 270lbs though.
Of course he does. I am on the shorter side and I own it. The honey badger is my spirit animal. Of course he would do something vain and pointless like that
They make 3" lifts and also shoes that are engineered to have shoe lifts built in, those are surprisingly difficult to spot under a pant hem. I’ve never tried the shoes but the inserts are awful to walk in. I’m 5’4", of course I’ve tried the inserts, lol.
Yeah, they keep saying Trump self-reported his height and weight. Apparently he’s lost 25 pounds since his presidency, according to CNN. I ain’t buying that lol
He only just now finished getting booked and Fulton County’s system only updates once a day. The numbers on there are likely placeholders from what Trump told them.
This sounds like the average extrovert’s perspective on an introvert lifestyle tbh. “Oh you have minimal social life and focus on your passions there must be something wrong with you.”
Yep, or a caffeine addict who is flabbergasted I don’t consume caffeine. (I’m not calling everyone who consumes caffeine a caffeine addict, just the ones who literally can’t function without it) Like I can’t consume more than a negligible amount of caffeine because it triggers my migraine. But apparently something is wrong with me because I’m not dependent on a drug to stay awake.
I have the same issue. I can take 300 mg and then fall asleep. I had a spinal tap this spring and as I get post-spinal headaches they gave me a lot of caffeine and when I fell asleep they were somewhat weirded out. But I am being tested for ADHD which it might be linked to.
This is 100% ADHD. I can drink coffee right before going to bed and sleep like a baby. It has to do with the way our brain needs energy. I find that caffeine calms me down because my brain finally has enough energy to regulate my attention.
It can be and is one of the reasons why I am in the process of diagnosis. The issue is that it is not easy as the traits of ADHD and PTSD have a lot of overlap. There are two things why I do think it is both is this. Another is that I do get pretty intense hyperfocus.
It is and it’s normal. When I was taking medicine to help with ADHD I could drink a huge coffee and then go to sleep. I stopped taking ADHD medicine 15-20 years ago (mainly due to side effects and being rebellious against my parents) but I still have a weird relationship with caffeine. 3 coffees to even feel it at all, and one just makes me sleepy.
People with ADHD have something called a paradoxical effect with stimulants. It’s related to the differences in brain chemistry, and it’s why amphetamines are a useful pharmaceutical therapy for those with ADHD while having something more akin to a recreational effect on the neurotypical.
Sometimes the paradoxical effect is just nothing, or very limited expected effect. The name is a bit of a misnomer in the sense that stimulants don’t have an opposite effect, but rather they are inducing stimulation where it is lacking for ADHD. So instead of getting this rush of energy and focus that a neurotypical individual would, those with ADHD are merely reaching a “normal” level of stimulation by compensating for a lack thereof. In essence the stimulants aren’t acting differently with ADHD, instead their action is compensation. You can see evidence of this in that those properly undergoing amphetamine therapy will still have some side effects of stimulants (e.g. reduced appetite).
At least this is how I understand it. I’m only a nurse, so I very well could have some misunderstanding here that hasn’t been corrected.
I call them my coffee naps. 3 cups and then i go pass out for two hours. And I just got diagnosed with ADHD this week. Wasn’t aware of the relationship between the two.
I’d even go as far as to say that everything I’m not forced to do is, (very) technically, more or less, based on selfishness/egoism.
There’s the times when I genuinely enjoy doing something
times when I don’t really care about something (or even dislike it slightly) but friends/family members are happy to do it together (in turn being beneficial for me because I like them being happy)
something I may dislike but is (in the long term) beneficial for me (studying, taking yucky medicine :)) )
probably lots more categories I can’t think of/don’t have the time to write down
Of course this is kinda taking it to the extreme, but I don’t think I’ve ever done anything without any benefit, however broadly defined, for me, unless I was absolutely forced to do so without any way out.
What you encountered was a sociopath projecting how they feel about every action they take onto you. Somehow you are the asshole for not complying with their selfishness.
Desktop replacements: FreeTube and Piped. I personally prefer FreeTube; the UI is way better than Piped.
Android: LibreTube (it also works with Piped but I just imported my youtube subscription list instead). There is also NewPipe too!
If you’d rather dump YouTube entirely, there is Odysee and PeerTube. Though for most people they’re just not viable, total replacements. Only you can decide for yourself on that matter.
Enjoy!
Edit: If you want to export your YouTube subs and playlists you’ll have to do Google Takeout; but after that it’s super easy to import/export them from Freetube and Piped whenever ya want.
You might like NewPipe for android. Same flexibility with importing subs, but cleaner and less errors, in my experience, but as long as you’re not using the YT app…
Vinegar is a Safari extension for iOS that turns the YouTube media player into a generic iOS one, completely bypassing all of these restrictions. I’m not savvy enough to know if it’s something Google can kill or not, but it’s working great for me right now. Even lets you do PiP and background play.
The S in MSRP is “suggested”, so I don’t see any technical problem with it. I think we need a separate term if it’s meant to be a locked price point across sellers.
Listen to this scam.
I stopped at a Starbucks kiosk to get my kid a juice box the other day. When I paid for it by card the card machine prompted for a tip, 25%, 20%, and 15%. Here’s the kicker, 25% was selected by default! You actually have to use button on the machine to move through the selections to get to NONE. To top it off the lady behind the counter casually said, “Oh you’re using a card? Just press the green accept button when the menu comes up.” which would have selected the 25 option.
Owner wants to get his cut, server wants to put gas in their car. We’re a country of 350 million attempted unique make it rich stories and it’s a goddamn mess.
We need UBI and jobs programs aka Trek after WW3…but I fear we may have to fight the war to get it
It does make sense to increase all menu prices in order to pay higher wages, but it’s a sleazy dishonest practice to hide that increase from the customers until it’s too late.
Because raising the price of everything lets you know ahead of time that you are paying more. I’m fine with a price hike if it means servers get better pay, but hiding it like this is scummy and borderline fraudulent.
It isn’t hidden. They tell you upfront there is an 18% charge, however they rely on people ignoring that or psychologically not caring and only looking at the item price.
I wonder how many people would see the warning and assume it just means an 18% auto gratuity? Because that’s very common and the amount is exactly what many auto gratuities have (or at least had when I last was in the US, which was several years ago). Because if I saw something saying there was an 18% service fee, that’s what I’d assume. I would not think there’d be a tip on top of that.
That said, the US custom of not including the final price (including taxes) in the posted prices is a shitty, toxic practice and should be illegal.
I saw elsewhere that workers are suing this restaurant over this specifically. If they are doing a service charge like this it should not be revenue generating to the restaurant.
If you raise the price of everything by 18% the prices on the menu will be 18% higher, possibly discouraging people from eating there. If you add it at the end people will still choose to eat there at least once. It is practically the same as raising prices, just a lot more dishonest.
Also illegal. It’s called bait and switch. Advertise one price, provide the service, then change the price. What if you went to get $50 in gas, and after you put the nozzle back the price suddenly changed to $59. Unless there’s a very visible sign saying it would happen before you started pumping, it’s illegal.
I’m sure that they have a sign by the front stating that they do this. Probably on the menu as well. I doubt that most people are doing the math themselves and are more likely to see a $10 menu item and think it’s $10 + tax and fees. Basically the extra fees are an afterthought.
It’s getting stupid in Canada too despite our laws being different (as in, you cannot make less than minimum wage if you work in a place that allows tips).
I got my oil changed a few months ago and the machine prompted me for a tip. For what? The mechanic did their job, I paid for said job. Transaction concluded.
I tried Crumbl cookies for the first (and last, holy crap overpriced) time. Got asked for a tip. For what? I got six cookies in a box and then had to leave the store because there’s no seating to eat them there. The person who helped me took my order. That’s it. Another employee put six cookies in a box and put them on a counter and said my number. Not a lot of wiggle room to go “above and beyond.”
What’s next? A tip at the grocery store for the cashier scanning my groceries? A tip at the drive-thru?
Here’s a tip. Don’t work for an employer who doesn’t pay you what you’re worth.
EDIT: Actually, the tip at the drive-thru is already a thing. Starbucks prompts for a tip at the drive-thru. For what? The barista took my order and made my coffee. I drove up to a window, took it, and fucked off.
I booked a hotel online the other day and was asked if I want to leave a tip… A tip for what? I didn’t even interact with a human. Just clicked a few buttons on a website. Am I tipping the web developer?? Lol
As a developer, I never get tips. Even on my open-source stuff, I have a “tip jar” PayPal link on the very bottom of my readme files. Never asked, never required. Know how much I’ve made in tips over the years? Exactly $0.
I know it feels gross, but asking is how you get people to do things. This is true for pretty much everything. That’s why mobile apps have a popup asking people to leave a rating, and Apple even has a standardized API for showing that popup since it’s so common.
So you should try something similar for you projects. Come up with an (ideally non-intrusive) ask that feels like a personal request rather than just a link dumped somewhere in a readme.
And if you feel bad about it, just remember that getting people to pay for OSS is a win for the whole ecosystem!
In the US you generally cannot make less than minimum wage, the employer can directly pay you less as long as your full compensation (pay + tips) are at least minimum wage, if not they are supposed to pay more.
I think the explosion of tip questions is due to the card processors figuring out there was an untapped area where they could pressure people to tip and skim off a percentage of that.
I think you misunderstood. In some states, you will be paid below minimum wage if you make enough in tips. IIRC there was a story a number of years ago about servers in Tennessee (?) only making $2.15/hr. It was legal because they made enough in tips to cover the other $5.10/hr that the restaurant is supposed to pay. So instead of the tips being extra cash on top of pay, the restaurants were literally having the customers subsidize the majority of their pay.
I understand that, but I’m talking about Canada. In Canada if you’re paid $13, $18, hell $50 an hour, it doesn’t matter whether or not you make tips. Your employer must pay you your full hourly wage no matter what.
Superautomatic machines make inferior espresso shots objectively. For various mechanical reasons they will never make espresso as well as non-automatic machine.
That being said, I own one at my house. It’s very convenient and it’s passable espresso (when using decent beans, Starbucks burns their espresso beans and that’s the main reason it sucks). However, if I’m paying $5+ for a couple shots of espresso in whatever form I’m expecting it to be made right. Not worse than my mid range home machine makes with a couple button taps.
It clearly doesn’t suck or there wouldn’t be one on every street corner in North America.
But I’m sure you’re right about the automation. They don’t want variability in your experience. They want a coffee in Texas to taste the same as a coffee in Iqaluit.
Service charge I would presume is primarily paid out to the non-wait staff at the restaurant. The kitchen in particular.
Tips go to the wait staff, and they will pay some of that out to other staff (e.g. front staff) depending on how the restaurant works.
These are going to be separate. The service charge is there so they can increase prices by a tightly controlled amount without needing to fuck up the carefully targeted price points ($8 or $7.99 is a lot better than $9.44). Which is shitty, to be clear: it’s a hidden way to increase prices while still advertising the same price. But it’s not something that replaces or complements the tip, it’s just a shitty price-adjustment.
A waiter or waitress is still going to be dependent on the actual tip.
Thank you for posting this you are correct the fee goes to the restaurant and they use the money to pay the back of house. In my experience it is just so the restaurant can provide the same wages as before to back of house but not out of the restaurants pocket. This tends to result in people tipping less so the server directly makes less money. There is also often no accounting/oversight into how the restaurant uses the fee. If I recall correctly the city of Los Angeles is looking into the legality of how these fees are presented to the customer and the fact there is no oversight.
That’s a good question, and the easy answer is ‘they should.’ As the commenter above you mentioned, they use it as a tactic to advertise the same (competitive to other local restaurants) price people are used to. A more transparent way of doing business would be raising the price of the menu items to compensate staff fairly. The restaurant owners/management fear that if they do this it would drive away customers who believe the food is overpriced and look to their competitors. It’s easy to say, ‘just pay the staff a fair wage,’ but not quite as easy in practice. Most restaurants are small businesses just barely scraping by. The OP is right to be annoyed, but as always, context and a basic understanding of a situation’s underlying principles make the easy answer difficult to implement.
I worked in restaurants for years and this is the correct answer. I also die a little inside at how many posts say to pay servers a living wage but then balk at the idea of paying extra for the meal. Where else would the money come from??! As you said, if they raise menu prices, their competition will undercut and do this. It would also affect takeout prices where tips are usually lower. People hate tipping and want a magic solution where waiters make more but also nobody’s charged more.
Because liberal mystification with fancy-sounding concepts made to make you feel dumb so you don’t realize it’s just creative surplus labor value expropriation
Because that’s not how it works in America. You know this. Don’t ask a question; it’s stupid. Declare your intention that it should be changed, and propose a way to do it.
If you actually care more than posting online, you can start a restaurant.
Is that really what Lemmy needs? Discussion on a topic that’s been hashed out a million times before? It would be more productive to talk about the weather than to keep circling the drain on this shit ad nauseam.
I feel like there's been plenty of discussion. Everyone knows it's a problem.
It continues to happen because there's no pressure to change it. Just discussions that fall into the abyss of the internet at this point, repeating things everyone already knows.
Part of the reason there's less pressure to change it than you might imagine is that we now have a hundred years of cultural inertia working on, yes, the customers and restaurants, but also on the waitstaff labor pool. At this point, the Americans who seek work as waiters are generally the ones who feel they work with the system and even turn it to their advantage. It's far from all, of course, but the "best" servers at most restaurants probably feel like they're going to make more working the customers than negotiating with their bosses.
So, you've got restaurants keeping their list-prices low and a built-in workforce motivator, customers who expect friendly service and accept that they're culturally responsible for the staff's pay, and servers who stay at the job because they feel like they'll make more than the restaurant would be willing to pay as a "fair" wage (and they're probably right). Now, it's full-on bizarre that we have taken an entry level service job and made it an exercise in theatrical entrepreneurship, and it says some unsettling things about the underlying social order in the US, but I'm not sure that at the nuts-and-bolts level, it's as broken as the people like to imagine.
Especially nowadays with so many people looking up menu prices online before going somewhere, it's a way to present your prices as lower than they actually are.
pay them , what You want to ... And increase the price on your menu ... BUT DO NOT STICK 😞 YOUR CUSTOMER WITH A HIDDEN FEE ...
Especially when we(customers) HAVE to pay tip 😉 ... {{ Like 'TF was the person who came up with the hidden fee even thinking... 😞🤔 ? }}
Point to your credit here: it’s illegal in this state to pay less than minimum wage whether the employee is tipped or not. ALL workers make at least $15.74/hr here, except for 14 and 15 year olds who can be paid 80% of minimum wage.
I hear this repeated so often and it ignores one glaringly obvious fact, servers aren’t the ones making any decisions…literally anywhere. They are the absolute bottom rung of decision-making. It is most definitely the restaurants that are just fine paying as little as possible. Servers do love mandatory gratuity however. Working a party of 10 when only one person tips on their own meal can mess up your whole night.
They would still have to add that living wage cost to the food prices. Hidden or not hidden only makes a difference in how surprised you are, not the cost.
If I share the little green pieces of paper, I can afford a used Toyota. If I keep them all to myself, I can buy a new Cadillac and drive past my starving workers in style.
Or they can get a less shitty employer. I see a hidden “service” fee, that’s the tip, take it to up with the owner, I’m not responsible for this. Restaurant staff really need to start directing their anger and efforts at their employer instead of customers.
Ya… That doesn’t seem realistic to me. Very few people will “direct their anger” toward someone with power over them. There’s always risk in a addressing issues with your employer because they can make your life worse. They can fire you, reduce your income or working hours, become inflexible with scheduling and demands, remove benefits, etc. No, it doesn’t always go this way and there are plenty of fine employers. But even if you have a reasonable employer and are free to raise concerns, there’s still risk and confrontation.
And what about alternate employers? Restaurant staff can go find a better employer, right? Except, job searches are very difficult and it’s near impossible to identify a good employer from a bad one while interviewing. Very real chance that you make a change and end up with more problems.
Don’t get me wrong. These hidden fees are 100% bs. It’s just not the employee’s responsibility to fix things. They usually have zero power in these situations. “Be good to the customer or I won’t get a tip. Be good to the employer or I won’t be scheduled to work.”
It’s not my responsibility to tip on top of a hidden 18% fee as the customer, either. That’s the point I was making. Waitstaff love to direct their anger at customers, as if it’s the customers fault. The employee does have the power to organize, campaign, and vote for politicians who could enact policy to make their situation better. Instead, they just bitch about customers somehow being terrible people because their employer doesn’t pay them a living wage.
Biden was in the news saying he wants to get rid of hidden fees. I was surprised that restaraunts weren’t on the list of industries being targeted. This kind of fee should be illegal. It should be required to be a part of the up-front price.
Hell, I feel the same about sales tax. It should be baked in to the price you see on the shelf or menu.
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